Yasser Arafat (left), Shimon Peres (centre), and Yitzhak Rabin (right) jointly won the Nobel Peace Prize Credit: (Inset left) Israeli President Shimon Peres adresses members of the Foreign Press Association during a visit in the southern Israeli town of Sderot, on July 6, 2014 following the recent Palestinian rocket attacks on the city. Peres, who will retire at the end of July, said "I'm retiring from the post of president but I am not retiring for the battle for peace." (R) President Obama (l.) presents the Presidential Medal of Freedom to former Israeli President Shimon Peres in the East Room of the White House in this 2012 file photo. Getty Images, Reuters and AFP

Former Israel president Shimon Peres dies

Former Israeli president Shimon Peres has died at the age of 93, two weeks after suffering a stroke,Sky News reports.Doctors had said Mr Peres had made some progress but his condition deteriorated rapidly on Tuesday.

Born in Poland in 1923, Mr Peres emigrated to what was then British mandatory Palestine when he was 11. He began his career as director general of the defence ministry in the 1950s, where he oversaw the development of Israel’s nuclear programme.

Mr Peres held nearly every major office in Israel during a five-decade political career – serving twice as prime minister (1984-1986 and 1995-1996) and also as president between 2007 and 2014.

He won the 1994 Nobel Peace Prize jointly with prime minister Yitzhak Rabin and Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat for his role in negotiating the Oslo Accords, which envisioned an independent Palestinian state.

The 1993 accords were hailed as historic, leading to the creation of the Palestinian Authority. It was hoped they would lead to peace within five years. Mr Peres had been foreign minister at the time of the deal, which was sealed with the symbolic handshake between Mr Rabin and Mr Arafat, watched by then US president Bill Clinton, in Washington.

But Mr Rabin was assassinated in 1995 and fighting since then has meant that, more than two decades after the deal, peace is elusive and some are ready to leave the two-state solution behind.

But, even as a new round of talks in 2013 collapsed, Mr Peres was still optimistic, promoting “a Jewish state by the name of Israel and an Arab state by the name of Palestine not fighting each other but living together in friendship and cooperation”.

He said: “There is no alternative to peace. There is no sense to go to war. “Terror doesn’t have a message, terror cannot break bread and cannot offer fresh air to breathe – it is costly, it is useless, it doesn’t produce anything.”

He had once rejected any compromise with hostile Arab states but said he changed his stance after 1977, when Egyptian president Anwar Sadat visited Jerusalem, leading to the first Arab-Israeli peace treaty.

In an interview with Time published in February, he said: “I didn’t change. I think the situation has changed. “As long as there was a danger to the existence of Israel, I was what you would call a hawk …The minute I felt the Arabs are open to negotiation, I said that’s what we prefer too.”

He spent a lot of time promoting peace between Israel, the Palestinians and the Arab world through his Peres Center for Peace and never gave up on the two-state solution.

In the Time interview, he described it as “the only thing which is possible in order to bring an end to terror, violence and hatred”. His wife Sonya died in 2011. He leaves behind their three children and numerous grandchildren.

US President Barack Obama described Mr Peres as “a soldier for Israel, for the Jewish people, for justice, for peace and for the belief that we can be true to our best selves – to the very end of our time on Earth, and in the legacy that we leave to others”.

He added: “A light has gone out but the hope he gave us will burn forever.” Mr Obama, Prince Charles and the Clintons are among those who will attend the funeral.